Andy Samberg’s ‘SNL’ Return Was the Perfect Lonely Island Homecoming

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Back in the early aughts, when The Lonely Island exploded on “Saturday Night Live” and a germinating viral internet, Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer would churn out silly ear worms weekly. It was a mix of songs they wrote in the pressure cooker of “SNL” and others they had been working on over breaks and sporadic studio sessions — which is what happened in 2024 with new releases “Sushi Glory Hole” and “Here I Go.”

“Lorne had asked me to come back for the Doug Emhoff stuff, for the election coverage,” Samberg told IndieWire over the phone. “We happened to have some songs ready to go, and there’s no place we’d rather put a video than ‘SNL.’ It’s where we started, and where I feel like people would be the most excited to see them. It just kind of worked out beautifully.”

The timing also worked out in confluence with “The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast,” which kicked off in April of 2024 with Meyers and the trio revisiting their library of songs and videos. “An unexpected byproduct of getting forced into doing the podcast was that then suddenly we were talking about ‘SNL’ in real time again — which was really cool and exciting, I can’t lie,” said Samberg. “It gave it a different kind of urgency for that stretch.”

“Sushi Glory Hole” came from Schaffer, an existing idea but more importantly an unforgettable phrase that “he kept just saying to make me laugh,” Samberg recalled. Eventually (presumably after a lot of “Where you going? Hear me out”), Samberg relented. “I was like, ‘All right, fine. Fuck it. Let’s just write it. I don’t know what it is, but I like the title,'” he said.

They began building out the song, but Samberg still wasn’t quite sure. It took stepping away and returning to it, finding more and more moments to laugh, and that earnestly repeated phrase to make it all come together. “The ‘Hear me out’ was actually the last thing added to it, and that’s what sort of unlocked it creatively for us, if I’m being honest,” he said. “That’s when we both decided like, ‘Oh yeah, we should do this song,’ because now they have this crazy rhythm of telling people to hear them out way before anyone has protested.”

“Here I Go” came from Samberg and Taccone’s brother Asa — a longtime Lonely Island collaborator — who provided the initial track that Samberg started writing to and Schaffer also helped with. “Doing sort of unapologetic pop and vocal and that kind of thing was very fun for me because it’s such a clean genre swing,” said Samberg. “That’s always where I feel like we get very happy, with a very stupid or odd idea set against a very clear set of rules.”

Samberg’s tenure at “SNL” ended in 2012, just before he would begin another regular TV gig with “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” He hosted in 2014 and made sporadic cameos, but playing Emhoff was his first return to the show since 2018.

“I never really have trepidation about going back,” he said. “I love going back. I’ve loved this show my whole life. I grew up watching it. I love being on it. It’s a hard job, but it was my dream to be on it, and then I got to do it. So when I go back, for me, it’s always fun. You remember how intense the show is and how breakneck speed it’s happening, but it doesn’t make me not want to go back. I love doing it.”

“SNL” is known for following a certain structure and strategy ever since its inception, but it’s safe to look back and divide the show into its pre- and post-Lonely Island library. There’s now an entire production department dedicated to pre-taped segments — and more pre-taped segments overall (“When I went back, people did half-jokingly be like, ‘This is your guys’ fault'”). Before The Lonely Island left the show, they recommended Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney’s sketch group Good Neighbor, and Samberg is of course aware of comparisons to the current writing team of Please Don’t Destroy.

“I think it’s incredible,” he said. “What an honor to feel — even if it’s other people saying it — like you’ve affected the fabric of the show. ‘SNL’ has been one of my favorite things in all of comedy and entertainment my whole life, so to feel like we had an impact there in any way is thrilling.”

Plenty of Samberg’s fan interactions still center on “SNL,” and he welcomes it. As a fan since the mid-’80s (and pretty much right up until he joined), he always wants to hear what people are loving on the current season, when they got into the show, and their relationship to it over the years.

“I used to say ‘SNL’ is like America’s campfire every week. You sort of re-litigate everything that’s going on and talk about it and joke about it,” he said. “It’s also been described as like a sports team for the country and for New York, where everyone who follows it feels ownership, in a way. That’s how I was as a fan, too, and that’s part of the fun of it.”